REVIEW: Stepping Out, Arc Theatre, Trowbridge

TROWBRIDGE Players are a brave bunch. Not only does their current production, Stepping Out, involve donning tights and leotards and revealing all their bumps and bulges, the play is not, it has to be said, an easy one to perform well.

Most of the action takes place in a tap dancing classroom, and very little actually happens, with the drive of the play resting on the dynamics of the group.

The group in question is a motley assortment of women, and one man, each taking refuge from the problems in their lives in a weekly tap dancing class.

It is not until the second half of the play, though, that each character's problems are revealed, so the first half, before even the relationships between the members of the group develop, is very pedestrian and a few forgotten lines didn't help speed things up.

Interestingly, though, as the fictitious tap dancing group began to gel, so did the Players, and by the second half, all the gaps were gone, the action was pacey and everyone actors and audience had settled in to what is actually a very funny play.

The humour does not, however, mask the mini tragedies being played out by the individual characters. What begins as a class of easily recognisable types, almost but not quite caricatured, becomes a neat study of emotional crisis.

The mousey Andy, beautifully played by Stella Greaves, turns out to be both the victim of domestic violence and has an affair with the only man in the class, the wonderfully bumbling Geoffrey (Mark Andrews).

Meanwhile, Lynne (Emily Rutter) is grappling with big issues of guilt and death and the impossibly snobbish Vera (Nadine Comba) appears to have lost her husband to his dubious relationship with her 17-year old daughter. Even the class teacher is in crisis, shouting at the stunned group "I'm pregnant and I don't want to be".

All this, and a tap dancing show to stage, the final performance of which was hugely enjoyable, though far too accomplished to be a credible result of the near catastrophic lessons which we saw produce it.

By Dawn Gorman